Zooming in on all songs on each album with dendograms

The Fame


The Fame

Born This Way


Born This Way

Artpop


Artpop

Cheek To Cheek


Cheek To Cheek

Joanne


Joanne

A Star Is Born


A Star Is Born

Chromatica


Chromatica

Studying and comparing all songs with the highest energy level with a tempogram

Disco Heaven (energy: 0.946)


This tempogram of Disco Heaven shows one very clear line around 225 BPM. There is also a more vague line around 510 BPM, but it is not a clear as the first one.

ScheiBe (energy: 0.970)


Theere is one clear line around 225 BPM and one that is clear but not as consistent around 550 BPM.

Mary Jane Holland (energy: 0.967)


This tempogram is not very clear. There is a line around 200 BPM, but it is interrupted quite often. The biggest interruption is around 150 seconds, which could be explained by the syncopation that is incorporated into the the rhythmic pattern of the beat. There are even some parts when the beat dissapears completely.

It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) (energy: 0.778)


This tempogram does not have one distinctive line. There is something around 210 BPM, but it is not very clear. It is understandable that the line is tempo to distinguish in this song, because this jazz track does not have a very clear beat pattern.

A-YO (energy: 0.889)


A-YO has the clearest tempogram with its distinguishable line around 300BPM.

Black Eyes (energy: 0.937)


Black Eyes shows a line around 300, but it is not very clear. It is for example interrupted around 75 seconds when a guitar solo appears in the song.

911 (energy: 0.789)


This 911 tempogram has two clear lines around 220 BPM and 440 BPM. This is logical as the latter is the double of the first one.

Altogether, it is clear that most of the highly energetic songs have clear lines, with one or two exceptions. Most of them have their tempo between 200 and 300 BPM, which is a up-beat tempo for a track. So, it makes sense that these were the songs with the highest energy on each album.

Comparing all albums separately by their energy levels.


This histogram shows that there is a quite a big difference in energy between all the albums. Cheek To Cheek scores quite a bit lower than Chromatica for example, which is logical because the it is a jazz record consisting of more slower, chiller songs. Chromatica, on the contrary, has only upbeat songs and scores very high on the energy ranking. This rule seems to apply for all her pop albums. Artpop, The Fame, and Born This Way score much higher than Cheek To Cheek (jazz) and A Star Is Born. Joanne is kind of a mix, because it has both low and higher energy scores. The album consists of both upbeat and slower songs, as it is a mix of pop, folk/country and rock elements.

Studying and comparing all songs with the lowest energy level with a chordogram

Brown Eyes (energy: 0.508)


This chordogram shows Lady Gaga’s song Brown Eyes. There are a lot of changes in the song, but the most notable one is around 165 seconds. At this point in the song, Gaga turns up the volume of her voice for the bridge. The present chords are Cmin, Amin and Cmaj. Cmaj and Amin are relative keys and Cmaj and Cmin are parallel keys. They are all connected in this way, up til the end when there is a fadeout in the song around 235 seconds.

Bloody Mary (energy: 0.637)


Bloody Mary’s chordogram is very different than the previous one as the colors are much lighter. The clearest trend is F#min that keeps on going throughout the song, except for during the intro and outro. There are not a lot of notable changes besides this one.

Dope (energy: 0.429)


This chordogram of Dope shows a pretty clear structure. There is a 20-second intro, after which a verse starts. Around 45 seconds into the song, the pre-chorus starts, in which Bbmin is the most notable chord, that was also clearly present in the verse. This structure continues for the rest of the song.

Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye (energy: 0.129)


Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye also shows a clearly structures song. The most notable chords are Eb-maj, Fmin for a short part of the song, Emaj and C#min. These chords all lie close to each other.

Angel Down - Work Tape (energy: 0.237)


Angel Down - Work Tape does not show a very diverse chordogram. Dmin is quite present in the first 40 seconds and D#min stays very present throughout the whole song. For the rest, the chords are very light which means they are not very present.

Is That Alright? (energy: 0.279)


Is That Alright? shows a few present chords such as Ab-maj for a short part of the song and Amaj that is quite strong throughout the whole song. There are chords like Amin and Fmaj that show a smaller present, but are still there.

Chromatica II (energy: 0.184)


Chromatica II has three clear parts. The first part is the intro, the second part shows no strong presence of chords and the third part shows a strong presence of Fmin, Ebmaj, Dmin and C#min. This track is instrumental and orchestral so it is different from all of the other songs.

Lady Gaga: from her controversial *The Fame to her newest release Chromatica

Lady Gaga’s first album, The Fame, was released in August 2008 and immediately shot her to stardom. From that moment Gaga was on of the biggest artists in the world. Lady Gaga is one of the biggest pop artists in the world and is known for her musical range. After her debut album, she has released a variety of musical projects, ranging from mainstream pop to folk and jazz. I am very much

This aim of this website is to display my research on Lady Gaga’s full discography. The albums I will compare are The Fame, Born This Way, Artpop, Cheek To Cheek (with Tony Bennett), Joanne, A Star Is Born Soundtrack and Chromatica. To study the musical differences, I will first rank the albums by commercial success by looking at the Spotify streams each album has. I will then look at the musical differences of each album and conclude if there is a relationship between the the commercial success and musical elements, such as energy and valence.

Ranking all of Gaga’s albums by the amount of Spotify streams

Before studying the musical elements of Lady Gaga’s music to compare it to the commercial success, I have to rank all albums based on their success. I first calculated the total amount of streams of each album on Spotify on February 28, 2021. Then I divided this by the number of songs on the album to compare all songs equally. My ranking will therefore be based on the average streams per song on each album.

  1. A Star Is Born Soundtrack (2018)
  1. The Fame (2008)
  1. Chromatica (2020):
  1. Joanne (2016)
  1. Born This Way (2011)
  1. Artpop (2013)
  1. Cheek To Cheek (2014)

The only issue with this method of calculation is that all albums were released at different points in time, so some albums have naturally had more time to be streamed. I have not found a reliable source that provided me with data that can be fully equally compared.

Is there a clear and distinctive relationship between music and commerce in Gaga’s music?

I have not been able to draw a conclusion as there are more musical elements I want to compare.